| Under the light of the crescent moon, I can remember the sights still to this day - the grass covered, low lying islands, reflected in the troubled ocean; the shifting dunes and scrubby hills beyond them - inland a ways, the flat land, some of it swamp, some of it desolate, all of it beautiful. The sound of the birds in the morning, and of the crickets and frogs at night - the occasional baying of a hound from a nearby farm - these sounds still beckon me, and welcome me home. I remember the sight of the mountains in Utah and Wyoming, I remember the Western Lands, beckoning me, the bones of the earth poking straight up out of the ground, a sight which is foreign in the blue ridge parkway - there, there are a series of hills before the peaks of the blue ridge, and all is covered by a carpet of hardwoods and pine. The sun blazes across this country, triggering spring and summer and fall - from the shining white surf of the east coast, across the verdant green and into the baked, hot climate where life nevertheless exists; as the mountains rise, the plants change in those desert lands, from the low laying Mojave with it's twisted cacti, the lonesome Joshua tree and the Creosote. The Hualapai Mountain range shoulders up subtly as you travel west, with increasing hills, and in the distance you can see the mountains, huge in the thinning air. The Chaparral is a low laying bush - thorny and tough, it is the plant responsible for the name chaps, the leather leggings which protect cowboys from the leaves and branches of this plant - but as tough as the Chaparral is, they give way to the conifers, mainly pines and junipers, and then the coniferous forests as you climb the slopes of the mountain, always with Flagstaff shouldering up, seemingly from the depths and clawing at the heavens. In years past, on Flagstaff and other tall peaks, you could see snow long after spring had begun, and over all the sun bathed the land in golden glory. After the mountains, the land slopes gradually down, to the rolling hills of Southern California – the grass on these low hills looks like it is mowed, so perfect are they in the wild and some of the mountains are again abrupt, jagged shards poking through the skin of the earth. The land is filled with beautiful spots, from the north to the stretches of the sun, but on a wide shelf of land just to the east of the Pisgah Forest in North Carolina, at the top of a small hill is the spot that I find most enchanting – no matter where I go, or how often I stay away, it is the spot which I shall always call my home, where the crocuses greet each coming year with perfect beauty and calmness. |
Essay - Why I Live Here
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